FilmOn Offers Live TV Broadcasting – But Is It Legal?

A start-up by the name of FilmOn is offering free live TV broadcasting via their website. According to one report, the live TV feed can be viewed on either a computer or Apple iPad. The streams are exactly what you would see if you were sitting in front of your TV set. Streaming is done in HD and includes the following stations:

ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, the WB, Ion, and even some non-American channels like Scuzz, Dubai Sports, and BBC News.

In addition:

Visiting the site from our regular browser brought up a more comprehensive site which asked us to download a file but wouldn’t tell us exactly what the file did or would do. Support is currently pretty limited, and there’s little explanation of the process, so we opted not to download and go back to the iPad, instead.

The mobile version of the site not only allows you to pick a channel to watch, but also see the schedule of what’s on that day, search TV Guide, and pause the live feed. We couldn’t get any videos to load on our Android phone, but the site was accessible and even listed more channels than the iPad showed.

Digging a little deeper into the FilmOn site, we discovered that the company has been around for a while and appears to operate in several different countries. They launched a HDi service — HD video for broadband TV — in early 2009. It appears to be the same thing as the stream on the FilmOn website. There’s also a subscription service involved, but it’s unclear whether this is necessary to watch everything on your computer as opposed to the iPad, if they’ve turned everything on to draw users in, and will then make them pay, or what.

When I visited the site I found a similar situation in which you had to download files in order to participate on the site viewing programming. I was reluctant to do so, because WOT [Web Of Trust] flagged the FilmOn site as potentially dangerous. FilmOn is being sued by ABC, NBC, CBS and others. The claim is being made that FilmOn has no right to rebroadcast any live TV program.

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